April 29

“Because there is wrath, beware lest he take you away with one blow: then a great ransom cannot deliver you” (Job 36:18). Harry Ironside tells the story of meeting “a very refined and elegant lady on a steamer, who asked indignantly, ‘You don’t mean to say I have to go to heaven like the dying thief, do you?’ ‘No, madam,’ I replied, ‘you do not have to. If you reject Christ, you will have to go to hell with the other.’ And so we would remind the reader: The saved thief believed on the Son of God, and is with Christ now. The lost thief scorned a Savior, and is in the depths of woe. You must be with one or the other for eternity. On another occasion a young man said, after hearing the gospel, ‘Of course, I intend to be saved some time; but there is no use being in a hurry about it. There is always a chance, even at the eleventh hour. Remember the dying thief!’ ‘Which thief?’ pointedly asked his questioner. One was saved that none may despair; but only one, that none may presume.”